New Mexico Dig Unearths E.T. Cartridges and Other Atari 2600 Hardware

An urban legend in video game lore turns out to be true!

After sitting in a landfill covered with concrete for 30 years, numerous unsold "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" cartridges for the Atari 2600 console have been dug up, confirming reports of their fate form the 1980s. Largely considered by many the worst game of all time, legend had it that truckloads of E.T. cartridges, along with other Atari 2600 hardware, were dumped in the landfill, but the story was never confirmed until now.

Filmmakers working on documentary and excavators received permission to dig up the Alamogordo landfill, which took place over the weekend. Twitter updates kept the Internet community in the loop, and interest heated up when an old and dusty Atari 2600 joystick turned up. After that, the excavators found an E.T. cartridge, box, and manual, followed by several more.

According to Microsoft's Xbox Wire blog, there are "a lot more down there," though the exact number isn't yet known.

"But at this point, we can safely report that those long-buried cartridges are actually, 100 percent there. Crazy, isn't it!? And it sounds like some other games are down there, too: Centipede, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and possibly more. 'Lots of boxes' is what we're hearing," Xbox Wire says.

The working title for the documentary featuring the dig is "Atari: Game Over." It will focus on the rise and fall of Atari, the latter of which E.T. may have a played a role.

Comments

There are whole fields of E.T. and other games buried in the Clint landfill outside El Paso, TX as well. I watched them bury them when I was a kid one time in the mid-80's when I went to the landfill with my dad. It looked like half the landfill was paved with plastic 2600 cartridges that were pressed into the sand by bulldozers.

It's a Legend the first major console the Atari being a movie produced by Legend Stephen Spielberg one hella director I hope they dig them all up =) Or find a majority of them so cool they are in that good of condition.

This was never an urban legend. It was reported as a factual news story at the time. Of course, there are many arrogant people walking among us today that simply refuse to believe that the world existed before they were born.

We can nitpick semantics, but the reason some considered it an urban legend is (A) unconfirmed reports linked the dumpings primarily to millions of unsold E.T. cartridges (this isn't what The New York Times reported) and (B) the secrecy behind the dumpings, which were shielded from press and public before quickly being covered in concrete.

YES the HYPE TRAIN in full effect lol "Legend" "Evidence" "Conspiracy" "HOAX" - MY GOD this was all known as fact years ago, talk about a bunch of people who have no idea of what they are talking about.......Sadly the young people and those who do not know better will eat this shit up lol.

They say they were all buried in 1983, and that is just incorrect, because I bought the game in 1985 and owned it for a few days before returning it -- when you could actually do that -- to the store where I bought it!